


A Dragon By Any Other Name

by savagelee



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Amnesia, Canon - Comics, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Post-Series AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savagelee/pseuds/savagelee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aang requests a single favor from the Mother of All Faces, and Noriko and Noren find themselves with a surrogate daughter. However, there are ties that transcend physical reminders, and some past demons unknowingly walk right to your doorstep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am normally hesitant about publishing chapters from an unfinished work, but I've worked on this for awhile -- since mid-August. Also, the chapters are short and I'd like to get part of this out there before the third part of "The Search" is formally released. This story holds the first two issues of "The Search" as canon.

Noriko remembers nothing of her past. Her husband says the same about himself. She remembers a thick forest with winding paths that led nowhere. Warm fingers interlaced, a cold sheet of darkness. It’s more than a little frustrating. Like an elusive spider-fly, like that single memory that eludes you, except it has to be at least -- at _least_ \-- twenty years of her life that she’s lost. But she doesn't know, not truly.

Optimism pervades. There is always the present, and the demons of the past cannot be found. She fears that they will soon catch up with her, but she has lived a relatively peaceful life for the sparse years that she remembers -- ever since she awoke on the forest floor. The mind is strange, as is amnesia that is induced for no clear reason. Some things come naturally. There’s her love for her child, her husband, and the people of the village. The love of the stage, of pouring passion into mythical stories spun from silken tongues.

She often wonders who she used to be, even when she tells herself that she has a family in the present; she has beliefs and duties and passions just as she is, and the past is the past. It’s as if Noriko was born from the dew on the leaves, created anew in the mossy thicket and from the blood and sinew of the massive trees.

She cannot tell Kiyi about her past because there is not one. Noriko cannot relate to Kiyi’s childhood because the thoughts of her child self are long buried alongside her adolescence and early adulthood. She feels as if she’s failed her child for some terrible reason -- that, if only she can find a way to explain why and how she is the way she is, she can somehow be a better person for those around her. Noriko tries to console herself with her work, with assurances that her doubts are nonsense.

She isn’t alone in her struggle, and that helps. She and Noren had been blank once, and they aren’t exactly whole -- even now. Perhaps she was a terrible person, a monster, and the spirits cleansed her mind. Yet she has a life to commit to. Despite her worries, this is the life she has, and the people around her are the ones that she must serve. It does no good to dwell.


	2. Chapter 2

The dinners that used to be lively are now quiet and restrained.

“Do you remember anything at all?” Noren says.

“No,” the teenage girl says, “I don’t -- hence how I was found in a location called Forgetful Valley.”

“And you mean that you have no past?” 

The girl looks at him irritably, “I mean that I woke up with people around me and they wouldn’t tell me who I was. I didn’t even know my own name until they told me.”

Noriko had thought of her own name, and it had coincidentally mirrored Noren’s. But no, it was hers, one feasible possession she could hold onto then. After learning his name, she immediately asked him then if she had she met him before and how he knew that she’d be here. He had told her that, yes, they had known each other, but only briefly. She asked what she was like, and he had said that she was sad and strong.

Part of Noriko wants to return to the shadow-infested space in her dreams, the inky puddles in the forest dirt. If only she can piece together this absurd mystery, these dashes of firefly light in the fog -- 

It’s quite a task, taking in another child, except that their new addition is no child, even if she has parts of her that are unformed -- undone for an unsaid reason. Noriko sometimes regretted that she decided not to give Kiyi a sibling, but she rationalized that, even if she’ll never truly know when she was born, she appears to be reaching the age that trying to bear another child would be an increased hazard.

She doesn’t want Kiyi to be lonely, and yet the older girl seems to want nothing to do with the child. She rarely speaks, and when she does, it’s unkindly. Noriko knows that it takes time to adjust to a new, well, everything and build relationships, though she admittedly fell in love with Noren rather swiftly.

The girl’s limbs are stiff, and her gaze is cold. Noriko has told her that she can come up with her own birthday now, and she only received a scoff in response. The older woman maintains her smile, though it’s difficult to persistently encounter friction. After dinner, Noriko offers to brush her hair, and the girl acts as if she takes great offense to that.

Noriko states, “You have such beautiful hair.”

Her new daughter spares her a disinterested glance. “It serves its uses. Covering my head, most of all.”


End file.
